


Turn the dial all the way up (burn brightly)

by strawberriesandtophats



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angels are monsters, Churches & Cathedrals, Intimacy, M/M, Post-Canon, Semi-Public Sex, Sometimes you just gotta leave your human vessel to confront God, Tenderness, Transformation, celestial sex, resolved tension, why would they need to go to the basement if they can do magic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-20 05:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19370203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriesandtophats/pseuds/strawberriesandtophats
Summary: Aziraphale burns bridges and builds new ones.





	1. Chapter 1

The proper way to contact Heaven was to do so by performing a very specific ritual. Chalk and flame and palms placed together. But it was very much like a phone call to a company, where a spokesperson would be the first one to answer you and did not have the answers you desired. Then it was a matter of trying to convince that person to let you speak to someone else, preferably higher up.  
One did not exactly phone God Herself directly, so to speak. That was not Done.  


At least not by angels.  


Humans did it all the time.  


Aziraphale had seen Crowley raise his eyes to the sky and his lips moving soundlessly so many times over the years that he’d stopped counting.  


He looked at the worn rug on the floor and then around his very intact bookshop, which was very much not on fire at the moment. It still held the memory of the fire deep within its core, burning pages floating in the air and the stink of old paper and leather being transformed into immortal memories and ash. The sound of bookcases falling like dominoes and crashing to the ground.  


His fingers brushed the spines of a series of red children’s books and then picked up a slim volume of poetry that still smelled like brimstone, fifty years after Crowley had left it oh so casually on his desk after a night out.  
It hadn’t been hellfire. He hadn’t burned alive surrounded by his collection of books and little trinkets and illuminated manuscripts. And he hadn’t broken down the door to Crowley’s place to find a puddle of holy water and broken furniture.  
Aziraphale had never expected Hell to come after him. He’d dealt with demons that were not Crowley before, mostly by ignoring their threats and by smiting some of them if they tried anything.  


No.  


It had been Heaven he’d been waiting for.

Aziraphale tugged at his waistcoat, swallowing.  
He’d spent thousands of years of swallowing the guilt that crept up on him every time he forgot himself. After an evening leaning back in his chair at the concert hall, too engrossed in the way that the music was turning him upside down emotionally to care at all anything else. After eating a scone slathered with clotted cream and strawberry preserves. After Crowley leaned against him on the bench, grinning at him.  
As if he wouldn’t dive down from Heaven, burning away everything that identified him as an angel if that meant five more minutes with Crowley. As if Crowley wasn’t worth that and more.

Hell had been crowded and filthy and the stink had been something else. But Hell had known that it was horrible. It reveled in it. In the dripping faucets and screams and flies.  


They sent their demons, every single one, up to Earth every day to do Evil Deeds and made them report back. He’d glimpsed towering stacks of paperwork on endless desks with damaged typewriters and notebooks and dribbly pens.  
Heaven was empty and white and horribly clean, like a show home that no one had ever truly lived in and still smelled like pricy disinfectant and plastic lemons. Angels did not leave because they saw no reason to do so unless by direct orders from above. After all, why would they taint their immortal being by spending time on Earth when they could stay within Heaven and be safe and sound until the End Times?  


Angels were not demons. That was how they defined themselves, as not being monsters. Demons were warnings. Beings that should be kept in the darkness and the filth, away from Heaven’s light. They were what you smote, what you hated, what you were not.  


Angels had not Fallen and where therefore still _Good_. Their own wings had not burned, their heavenly essences had not been stripped from them before they’d landed in scorching lava. Angels were still pristine and untainted.  
Leaving Heaven to update your wardrobe so that you still looked the part of an angel, richly clad in cream and soft greys was well and good, but an angel’s time was more wisely spent training to fight demons instead of spending every day doing miracles to simply make life for some humans a smidgen less horrible.  


No.  


That was what Aziraphale was for, they had reasoned and left him to it.

Heaven loved order and absolutes and obedience.  
It valued plans and certainty and office wear.  
It didn’t give a shit about Aziraphale.

Aziraphale tore his eyes from the worn rug and then knelt down to pick it up. The dust that was lodged deep within the rug disappeared into thin air as he shook it. He carried the rug to his little kitchenette, where he soaked it in the sink with warm water and soap. Every circular movement with the brush brought his heartrate down until it was no longer so loud that it felt like his body was malfunctioning.  


While the rug dried in the morning sun, Aziraphale took a wet rag from the sink and blessed the water clinging to the cloth. And then he wiped away the slightly smudged chalk lines on the floor, one by one until they were all gone.  
Aziraphale stood up, brushing faint traces of chalk off his trousers and fishing his glasses out of his breast pocket to look at his clean floor.  


Then he headed into the kitchen, where his rug was dry and more colorful than it had been in over a hundred years. The chalk remains that had gathered for all this time were gone.  


Aziraphale put the rug on the floor again, turned on his heel and switched the sign on the door so that it said ‘open.’


	2. Chapter 2

The old church on top of the cliff was a weathered one, the stone crumbling and barn owls nesting in the roof. The sea below had been at war with the cliff for a long time and it was winning.

Aziraphale opened the heavy wooden doors with the softest of touches, letting in the last rays of the sun as it sunk below the waves. As he walked, the church itself became sturdier, the wood growing young again and stones replacing themselves. The stained-glass windows gleamed, free of layers and layers of salt.

There was going to be wedding here tomorrow evening.

“Let there be light,” Aziraphale whispered, breathing in the feeling of love that still lingered after the engaged couple and their families had spent the day trying to prepare for the big day.

A single candle in the girandole was still lit, the flame flickering and the wax dripping down.

For a moment, he considered just miracling the place clean and adding some extra decorations. That was what he would have done a month ago, before the world had threatened to End.

He breathed out and closed his eyes, focusing on the deep silence until it echoed in his bones.

That sort of miracle was not going to cut it this time.

The light he’d created faded when he snapped his fingers, leaving only the candlelight.

 

“It’s all right,” Aziraphale said as the owls flew towards him on their silent wings and landed on the pews, regarding him with interest. “I’m not going to cause any harm.”

The mice edged closer to him, unafraid as they curled up next to his shoes.

He shed his human form as he made his way forward. It fell forwards on the soft carpet, not harmed in any way. The owls and mice did not move at all, instead they looked at his angelic form in the way all animals had done, utter trust.

Perhaps they sensed that angels did not need to eat.

Or that some part of all animals was hardwired to like the Angel of the Eastern Gate, who had watched over their ancestors.

Light so strong that it was not visible to human eyes made its way through every single crack in the building as Aziraphale spread his wings and a carpet of unblinking eyes unfurled. His golden hands brushed a wooden pew, reminding it that it had once, long ago, been a flourishing tree.

All around, the glass vases scattered around the place filled with flowers and the fridge in the back filled with ice lollies for the kids and lemonade for those that didn’t drink. The organ was tuned to perfection and the old wheel chair in the corner became lighter and easier to control. The smell of furniture polish rose from the now gleaming and suddenly comfortable wooden benches.

Aziraphale kept moving down the aisle as all the windows opened to let the air inside and everything settled back into place. The hymn books and stack of schedules floated down to a nearby table as the barn owls took flight. The holy water in the intricately carved basin swirled as it became even holier.

He couldn’t make it a good marriage, but he could make sure that the wedding itself would be held in style.

The fake plants in the foyer came alive and the little glass angel figures dangling from the low ceiling over the stairs that led to the priest’s office turned to diamond as Aziraphale came to a halt in front of the girandole.

He burned holiness into the very foundations of the cliff the church stood on and up to the tiles on the roof. Every single candle in the church caught fire, burning so fast that the wax could barely keep up.

Below, the little fishing village bustled on, preparing cakes and ironing and gathering flowers. Polishing boots and wrapping presents and locating jewelry. The world kept spinning as the flames flickered and the wax melted until all the candles went out at once.

 

Aziraphale stood in the darkness and the silence for a long while.

He did not put his hands together.

Nor did he get on his knees.

He just looked up.

 

“Everything is loved on Earth, Lord,” Aziraphale said to the sky, his voice older than the Earth itself. It was the voice of a being ready to take God by the scuff of Her neck and bring Her down to Earth for a Talk. “Every blade of grass. Every building. Every soul. All of it is holy, because humans have made it so.”

He folded all his wings, squaring his feet on the ground.

“If you don’t agree with me,” Aziraphale’s very essence suggested. “You could come down here and argue with me.”

The silence reigned, which was of course, its own answer.

All around the world, millions of miracles happened over the course of a few seconds. Broken bones mended, pain faded away for good, memories resurfaced.  Pies did not burn in the oven. Hospital bills were mysteriously paid in full. Pets and children found their way back home, safe and sound.

“Good,” Aziraphale said to the sky. He turned around, waking up his mortal vessel by dunking is angelic form into the body in the same way you’d slosh some water from a bucket into a horse trough.

Then he got up, dusting off his suit and running a hand through his curls before pushing the door open and stepping out into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

“I need you to stop the car,” Aziraphale said as the Bentley sped through the countryside. They had visited Adam and spent the day wandering absently around Tadfield. Crowley had managed to tempt the angel into trying some freshly iced devil’s cake and been very pleased with himself since. Queen was playing on the radio about prison cells and having somebody to love.

“What?” Crowley asked, looking at him over the brim of his sunglasses. “Angel, have you developed some kind of carsickness all of a sudden?”

“No,” Aziraphale managed, looking over the dark fields surrounding them. “There’s something I need to do.”

“You didn’t say that Upstairs had asked you to perform any miracles for them,” Crowley said, taking off his sunglasses. Then he looked over at the dark field, narrowing his eyes. “Or do you sense someone? ‘Cos I can’t sense anything up on that-“

“Not yet,” Aziraphale said. “But we’re going to.”

Crowley parked the car, which remained free of mud and not scratched at all by gravel. He kept his eyes on the angel, who was not bothering much with his human vessel at the moment. Aziraphale’s eyes were too bright and Crowley could see the gold blood running through his veins if he looked at the angel for longer than a few seconds.

Aziraphale got out and began walking towards the field without saying a word. The dew soaked through his trousers and socks immediately, but he kept on going even as his human body protested by shortening his breathing and having his heart hammer loudly in his chest.

 A gate appeared in the middle of a barbed wire fence, which Aziraphale opened. It was a demonic miracle, since Crowley was sure that in its absence Aziraphale would have taken the barbed wire in his hands and pulled it down, not minding how his hands bled.

Then Aziraphale waited for Crowley, holding the gate as the scent of wildflowers and grass rose around them. Azirahale’s halo was already flickering in and out of sight.

Crowley did not ask where they were going.

He just watched as Aziraphale’s suit melted away to become angelic robes. Moonlight lit up Aziraphale’s curls so that they became utterly white to the point of glowing. A human being, passing by, would have wondered why some idiot was walking around in his nightgown so late.

And then as they reached the very top of a small hill, Aziraphale’s human body crumpled to the ground. Crowley grabbed it and lowered it to the ground as carefully as he could.

Aziraphale was still there, but in his true form. A carpet of unblinking eyes covering a multitude of huge wings that reached between horizons, from which emitted such a strong golden light that Crowley was strangely glad that he was wearing sunglasses, even if they did not protect him against this kind of light. There was something about Aziraphale’s head that suggested that it could be turned around all the way as an owl’s head would.

“Angel?” Crowley asked, having turned into a snake and slithered closer.

The earth around them should have burned, should have been destroyed by the mere presence of an angel’s true form. Or was it just demon’s true forms that Crowley had heard should have that effect?

Anyhow, supernatural beings in their true form wasn’t something that the Earth was accustomed to.

Crowley waited for grass to flee, for stones to try to dig themselves into the earth, for birds to take flight. Instead flowers bloomed, ones that had not bloomed since the island had been very young in addition to flowers that had just taken root. Trees at the edge of the field reached towards them with their branches and even the stream in the distance appeared to be singing to them.

Crowley looked up at the angel, tongue tasting the air.

Come to think of it, he should have been utterly destroyed by the sheer amount of holiness in his proximity. Instead he just tasted hot black coffee after a freezing day and apple pie with cream.

Every single eye was raised to the sky and a shush fell over the field.

He’d never truly seen Aziraphale’s angelic form before, unless he counted that time when he’d valiantly attempted to sleep on the worn sofa in the back of the bookshop over fifty years ago.

 

Crowley had been on the verge of sleep when he sensed that something was off. He forced his eyes open, ready to bolt. When nothing happened for a good quarter of an hour, Crowley sighed and cursed his own paranoia.

He’d eyed the books on the shelves above his head, aware of just how long they’d spent in Aziraphale’s company. How much Aziraphale loved them, tenderly making sure that they did not fade or rot. They’d stay there as long as Aziraphale would, intact and whole. Perhaps they had become some part of Aziraphale himself, in a way, like the plants belonged to him. Not that Aziraphale shouted at his books or made elaborate displays of destroying them.

He reached out mentally at the very core of those books, not sure what he was doing. But his mind was screaming at the thought of sinking into nightmares in Aziraphale’s space.

The books must have brought Aziraphale some sense of comfort. Technically speaking, they were only wood pulp and ink and thread. And yet they contained galaxies of information about the human imagination, their dreams and fears and memories and loves.

Books floated above his head, one containing poems about silvery wings, another one had some very interesting erotica and the last one was all about growing vegetables in a small urban space.

He showed them a sliver of the ground-in paranoia, the echoes of fear that still lingered when he’d realized that he was Falling, the stinking terror of it all to see how they’d react. Just a sliver. Just to get the worst of it out so that it would not feature as prominently in his nightmares.

The books all flew back to where they had been placed with three distinctive thunks.

Crowley closed his eyes, aware of his body sinking deeper down into the sofa cushions and into his dreams. He thought of summoning a blanket to cover his face and had begun raising his hand to do so.

He hastily tucked his hand behind his head when he felt a familiar angelic presence coming towards him. For a split second, he’d hoped that the angel would ask to sit with him and Crowley could put his head in Aziraphale’s soft lap and the angel would run his fingers through Crowley’s hair.

At first, he thought that Aziraphale was wearing a magnificent gold tea dress and that this was already a very good dream.

But then Aziraphale came closer and Crowley realized that he wasn’t dreaming at all.

Crowley kept his eyes shut, his body howling at him to flee the scene or he’d burn alive. His wings threatened to spread, demanding to get him out of there, his skin wanted to revert to scales. The angelic form was too bright and terrifying to be something that he could block out by simply closing his eyes. The last time he’d seen anything like that had been during the War.

Crowley stayed put.

“There,” Aziraphale said, putting a tartan blanket over Crowley’s form. “All’s well, dear.”

Crowley bit back a reply about how that was a grandmother’s line and considered opening his eyes when Aziraphale adjusted the blanket so that it covered Crowley completely. The sense of love that washed over Crowley was nothing like a flash but instead more of a summer storm sweeping through the town that is your heart, leaving behind turned over garden flamingoes, trash fires and a deep longing for mango sorbet in the wake of the sound of thunder. It lingered and sucked whatever air had been in Crowley’s lungs. Tears threatened to emerge and leak down his cheeks but he held them back by sheer will.

It’s just because he loves that blanket so damn much, Crowley tried to convince himself. But all the fear that had lodged in his throat was gone. In fact, it was as if Aziraphale had turned him upside down emotionally and shaken him so that whatever doubts he had about the angel loving him fell out of his pockets.

He hadn’t slept at all that night.

 

Somewhere in an unspecified field in the English countryside stood an angel, waiting for a storm to hit. Lightning lit up the sky as the angel watched the clouds.

Rain fell, soaking the huge wings.

Crowley shed his snake form, leaving it on the ground.

His true form was not a pretty thing. Burned and blackened wings stretched as far as they could go. Long claws slid across his broken halo and over the blinded eyes across his wings. The half-healed wounds that crisscrossed his body were deep and still encrusted with gold blood.

Aziraphale stilled, rainwater dripping down his neck.

“Hello,” Crowley managed. 

“Hello,” Aziraphale answered. He reached out to Crowley, his wing covering Crowley’s form. The image of a wall rose in their minds as lightning lit up the clouds above them.

The first touch was the sensation of putting on a tailored wedding dress, the silk brushing your legs and the handmade lace enveloping your arms.

Crowley leaned into the touch as slowly as he could until Aziraphale was embracing him.

A truly decadent two-hour massage, Aziraphale suggested as he pulled Crowley closer. Your skin warming as knots unfurled and muscles relaxed helplessly on the bench. The taste of fresh pears from a roadside stall on a bright summer day.

The first drag of a cigarette in the middle of exam season, the smoke rising to the sky, Crowley replied. The satisfaction of winning an underground boxing competition against your cheating bastard of an ex. Stealing the best wine bottle in the city and running for it.

The best seats at a concert in a place built for the acoustics alone, Aziraphale reminded him. Finding the perfect reference material after five days of searching for it so that you could tell someone to academically stick something up their jumper. The scent of rising batter as the scones as the Ritz baked them as Crowley and Aziraphale chatted and drank champagne above in the dining room.

The champagne, Crowley agreed. All his eyes were open now, blinded or not. Aziraphale’s hand was caressing his cheek, sending him the feeling of drinking a perfect cup of tea.

Had this been a room instead of a field, they’d been on the ceiling by now.

Instead they floated high above the ground, too giddy to go back down and so close to each other that they could have been mistaken for one being.

They pressed their foreheads together, hands wrapped around each other and enormous wings dripping with water as they felt each other’s very cores, the whisper that God Herself had spoken that had brought them into being.

It was like turning the dial all the way up.

Or opening a heavily guarded bank vault by attacking it with a very powerful laser gun.

The bliss was so intense that the stars disappeared from view and the grass below them fell away. For a split second, there was nothing in the universe that they could sense but each other, bright and alive and loved.

 

They woke up covered in mud and soaked to the bone. They lay there for a moment, hands interlinked and refusing to shake off the afterglow.

It was only when the storm clouds had disappeared that they even made an attempt to move.

Crowley looked at his snake form with a certain amount of pleasure as Aziraphale miracled his suit clean and adjusted his bow tie.

“There you are,” Aziraphale breathed, picking him up and dusting off some dandelions that were stuck to his scales.

“You’ve got violets in your hair,” Crowley told him, slithering up to Aziraphale’s shoulder. “It’s fancy.”

Aziraphale patted his hair like a fine society lady on her way to a ball, a pleased flush on his face. His nails were painted dark green.

They were both faintly glowing.

“Let’s get going,” Crowley said, reverting to his human form as well and grinning at Aziraphale. “I want to get back to London before the sun rises.”

“That sounds ideal,” Aziraphale said, taking Crowley’s hand as they hurried down the hill and through the field to where the Bentley was parked. “Let’s go home.”

And so they did.

 


End file.
